Opinion: US labor data not so good

According to UBS, even though the US employment figures were much better than expected, the drop in unemployment rate was mainly due to falling participation, showing the continued slack in the US labor market. Economists don't think the figures will have a long-playing positive effect for the market.

“The US labor market report showed on Friday, that hiring in the US has been much stronger in April than markets had expected. 288K jobs had been created in April, compared to a 210K expected", analysts remind. "Also the unemployment rate dropped from 6.7% in March to 6.3% in April. However, a lot of this drop came on the back of a falling participation. Also wage growth has been flat, showing the continued slack in the US labor market”.